Avengers

Avengers

• Avengers- Avengers

In the late 70s, The Avengers established themselves as one of the US s preeminent punk bands. Fusing incisive guitar hooks, explosive rhythms and adolescent venom, the group forged some of the most in-your-face songs of the era. Their live shows were legendary, playing up and down the West Coast and even blowing Sex Pistols off the stage at the latter s final performance. As Byron Coley writes in the liner notes, Of the best bands of San Francisco s first wave in 1977, The Avengers were by far the coolest and youngest sounding. They roared without irony, as though this were indeed Year Zero (and, for a moment, it was), with history being overwritten by the new. The honesty of their belief was carried by their sound. And it was convincing! Originally released in 1983, four years after the band s dissolution, The Avengers self-titled LP is often referred to as The Pink Album for its magenta-hued cover design. Frontwoman Penelope Houston s iconic voice and razor-sharp lyrics resonate on anthems We Are The One and The American In Me, while penetrating ballads like Corpus Christi reveal a truly out-of-body euphony. The Pink Album remains The Avengers definitive statement collecting their classic Dangerhouse EP, sessions recorded with the Pistols Steve Jones and a half-dozen revelatory demos. While much has been written about The Avengers in the past three decades, rock critic Greil Marcus puts it succinctly, The word I always come back to is mystical, and that remains almost theirs alone.